Vincenzo — Episode 20 Recap (Finale)
Vaisravana leads yakshas and rakshasas. And ensures not only the good die young.
The final death toll
- Team Jipuragi aka Vincenzo: 15 (9 in self-defense; net 6)
3 mafia rivals, shot
Hong Yu-chan’s Truck of Doom(tm) driver, beaten in prison scuffle
3 of Han-seok’s enforcers, drowned in a lake
3 of Paolo’s henchmen, shot
His mother’s murderer, shot
Hwang-gyu (Vincenzo’s enforcer involved in Yu-chan’s death), blown up
Prosecutor Jung In-kuk, thrown off balcony in staged suicide
Choi Myung-hee, burned alive while doing Zumba
Jang Han-seok, drilled slowly - Team Babel: 27 (0 in self-defense; net 27)
11 Babel researchers, burned
1 Babel whistleblower, shot and drowned
Hong Yu-chan, hit by Truck of Doom(tm)
Prosecutor Seo (Namdongbu Prosecution), bludgeoned by hockey stick
Dr. Gil (hospital director), shot
2 bodyguards, shot
4 plaintiffs from Babel Chemicals case, poisoned with carbon monoxide
Babel union leader, hit by Truck of Doom(tm)
Vincenzo’s mother, strangled
CEO of Daechang Daily, thrown off building
Pyo (Vincenzo’s enforcer involved in Yu-chan’s death), beaten
Jang Han-seo, shot
Han Seung-hyuk, stabbed
Previous: Vincenzo — Episode 19 Recap
Start from the beginning: Vincenzo — Episode 1 Recap/Series Landing Page
Recap
Han-seok manages to fire his gun in SenCha’s direction and Cha-young is hit, but Han-seok is only briefly remorseful. Han-seo tries his hardest to protect SenCha, until he is unceremoniously and fatally shot himself. Han-seok quickly flees when he realizes the gun is out of bullets. A dying Han-seo hands Vin-hyung his phone and wonders if he did well.
Cha-young wakes up in the hospital and urges Vincenzo to finish the job now that he knows she’ll recover. She says her goodbyes and instructs him to leave the country as soon as he’s done, without contacting her. He asserts his promise to return someday.
Attorney Choi reads the news in prison: Han-seok is on the run for Han-seo’s murder and Cha-young’s shooting. Elsewhere, Vincenzo asks Agent Ahn to unlock Han-seo’s phone. He also finally turns in the Guillotine file, but urges him to consider using it like a villain.
Chief Prosecutor Han is ready to sign himself into prison to save his own hide, until Vincenzo calls with a better offer: release Choi in three hours, and be spared. Meanwhile, Han-seok stocks up on men and weapons, and throws his phone into the water to avoid being tracked. Choi is released and incensed to learn that Han was responsible. Cho tails her as she leaves the prison.
Choi goes to her office and contacts Han-seok on a burner phone. They can’t meet, so they quickly go over logistics of fleeing the country. Vincenzo receives Han-seo’s unlocked phone; despite Han-seok having disposed of his phone, this phone is still tracking his whereabouts.
After learning that Han sold out to Vincenzo, Han-seok has his crew of enforcers stab him in front of the courthouse. Vincenzo, in pursuit of Han-seok, misses the fugitive chairman but arrives in time to see Han bleed to death.
Two left.
Vincenzo temporarily loses track of Han-seok and decides to go after Choi in the interim. Choi stops by her apartment for her passport, but she’s cornered by Vincenzo and Cho and unable to flee.
Vincenzo: When you’re facing a predator, it’s better to hide than run. Why are you so reckless?
Choi Myung-hee: I didn’t know that. I’ve always been a predator myself.
She tries to have one last beer, but Vincenzo figures she’d enjoy a final dance, instead. And dance she does, on her cut up and bloodied feet, engulfed in flames as a record plays in the background. With the criminal justice system cleared of corruption — for now, anyway — the police start to catch on to the connections between the people that are being killed and put an APB out on Vincenzo.
One left.
Han-seok’s GPS signal is back on, and CEO Park, Hong-sik, Cheol-wook, and Larry find him at the shipping docks. They manage to subdue all of Han-seok’s men, but not before Han-seok stabs Cheol-wook twice. Vincenzo arrives and immobilizes Han-seok with two gunshots, while CEO Park, who was a surgical nurse in a previous life, tends to Cheol-wook’s wounds.
When the police patrolling the area arrive, the men plead with them to help Cheol-wook. The police are unable to leave an injured civilian, allowing Vincenzo to escape with Han-seok in the backseat of his car.
In the same abandoned building where Choi was killed, Vincenzo tells Han-seok that he was able to find him with Han-seo’s help. Back when Han-seok became the official chairman of Babel, Han-seo had implanted tracking devices in all his watches and downloaded a tracking app on his phone. This is why he had given Vincenzo his phone when he died.
Han-seok smugly tells Vincenzo to kill him quickly, but Vincenzo has a special punishment prepared: a drill that will move 5mm every 5 minutes, until his lung is punctured at noon the next day. Just the mere thought of it causes Han-seok to plead for his life. He and Vincenzo are both businessmen; can’t they work out a deal? Nope — Vincenzo puts the drill on autopilot and walks away.
Vincenzo briefly considers contacting Cha-young but decides against it and tosses his phone aside. Near the airport, Agent Ahn and Cho provide him with a passport to circumvent the APB. Mr. Nam and Cha-young unexpectedly arrive to see him off, and he gives them both a warm embrace.
The Geumga Cassanos start a winery and vineyard and sell/lease out rows to guests who want to tend their own grapes.
One year later…
Babel Group is all but done. Kingmaker Kim campaigns for borough president outside the still-standing Geumga Plaza. His platform is to resume redevelopment of the area, but the Geumga Cassanos crash his sparsely attended rally.
Cha-young finishes Gyeong-ja’s posthumous retrial nearly a year after her death. Her charge is downgraded to manslaughter, her CEO employer found guilty of sexual harassment, and his wife charged with negligence. All it took was a couple of pictures of Vincenzo to get her son, Min-seong, to submit a written statement on the incident.
Agent Ahn appears to have been promoted up to Agent Tae’s role, and Cho is rehired by the intelligence agency. CEO Park is now helping out at the pawn shop while Yeon-jin takes care of Dal-rae. Cheol-wook has miraculously survived his stabbing, thanks to CEO Park’s first aid. Miri continues to give piano lessons and has hidden her share of the gold bars in a piano in her studio.
After the real Mr. Anderson and Ms. Bening’s engagement ceremony, Nanyak Temple thrives as a destination for marriage proposals. A couple that looks deceptively like Vincenzo and Cha-young are shown getting engaged. The golden Buddha remains under the temple in the secret basement.
In a flashback to Vincenzo’s last meeting with Monk Jeokha, Vincenzo grapples with the future he’s destined to return to. The monk likens Vincenzo to Vaisravana, who he describes as the scary face at the front of temples that protects Buddha’s ways and all ways human. Vincenzo might not find enlightenment, but he’ll get compliments from Buddha from time to time.
Cha-young also recalls her last conversation with Vincenzo. She’d said she could visit him if he couldn’t return to Korea, but he’d insisted that he would find a way like the tale of Jiknyeo and Gyeonwu. At the Jipuragi office, she receives another of many postcards from Malta, along with an invitation to a Korea-Italy ambassadorial event.
Cha-young attends the event and she is approached by another guest. As promised, and just as in the folktale says, Vincenzo has returned to Cha-young after a year. He’s managed to sneak in with Ambassador Sponza, his friend from episode 2, and can only stay one night.
Vincenzo invites Cha-young to his island if she ever grows weary of fighting the good fight; he’s named it Pagliuzza, or Jipuragi in Italian. At the end of the night, the couple share their first real kiss, but their joy is fleeting.
Comments
I’m switching back to writing in first person, because there are a lot of opinions about this episode and these are just mine.
Firstly, Vincenzo’s return and the kiss. This has been interpreted by many to be the beginning of a happy ending for the couple, but I beg to differ. Their trials and tribulations together left no room for them to acknowledge their feelings for each other throughout the series, so some passage of time was necessary. Once things settled down, they needed to meet again and acknowledge their feelings without external influences.
But, ultimately, this isn’t a confession; it’s closure. Their individual paths have diverged, making them even less compatible as a couple. And now that Vincenzo has fulfilled his promise to return, they no longer owe each other anything. Even Song Joong-ki himself said in an interview he played that scene as if it would be unlikely they would see each other again.
And you know what? Hong Cha-young don’t need no man. Aside from getting released from jail, she doesn’t ask him for one single thing — not to stay, love her, or even keep in touch. I am totally satisfied with this outcome.
Secondly, many people have pointed out that Vincenzo’s character lapses in the scene where Cha-young gets shot. He normally has a good read on every situation, so why is he suddenly like a fish out of water?
I initially agreed, but have since come to the following realizations:
- “Villains don’t deserve to love,” but it won’t stop them from doing it anyway. Seeing the jewelry Vincenzo had gifted Cha-young covered in blood — and not knowing what physical state she could be in — could have moved him to act irrationally.
- Vincenzo had not expected Han-seok to get out of prison so soon and didn’t have time to prepare a firearm. This is why he is unarmed. (Bonus: Being unarmed allowed him to report the shooting quickly without implicating himself.)
- He probably also hadn’t expected Han-seo to be there, and alive. Now he’s faced with two people to save, both of whom he has grown to care about.
- He’s great at analyzing situations in which people are only looking out for themselves, but unaccustomed to people acting unselfishly.
In short, he was faced with too many new variables in a dangerous situation with not enough time to adapt. He might have been relieved to see Cha-young unharmed, and then immediately blindsided when she took the bullet for him. And I bet he was banking on Han-seo really hitting him so he could grab that hockey stick himself.
It was sad to see that Han-seo had potential to be really clever if he’d been allowed. I think he genuinely deems himself foolish for implanting the tracking devices in his brother’s watches, because Han-seok would have thought so and he has no one else to tell him otherwise. I can’t help but feel that his death was in vain, but you can’t fight a war without significant losses, and the world these characters inhabited left no room for such a gentle soul. RIP, Han-seo. You deserved to be loved, and to be someone’s brother.
Aside from Han-seo, the show’s writers do a wonderful job of bringing every character’s arc to a natural conclusion. Agent Tae and Agent Ahn decide to keep Vincenzo’s mission alive with the Guillotine file. Vincenzo is explicit in not keeping promises that aren’t business-related, so he doesn’t become Dal-rae’s godfather — but he does become The Godfather. Cha-young is powerful all by her fabulous self and becomes the Don of the Geumga Cassanos, who continue to live at the plaza even with their golden windfall. And Attorney Choi and Han-seok endure their cruel, and highly unusual, punishments until the bitter end.
Even Inzaghi got to live out a miniature version of the Vincenzo storyline: a badass pigeon who befriends an irritable tenant, eliminates trash on his behalf, and disappears into the night. Just like Vincenzo himself.
Bravo to all involved for producing an amazing show. My only criticism? No hot air balloon rides.
